Blog for the RepRap project at www.reprap.org - a project to create an open-source self-copying 3D printer.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

RepRap wasn't built in a day

At the end of last week I assembled our first RepRap Version 1.0 "Darwin" from scratch and shot a time-lapse video of the entire thing at one frame every three seconds. It took me four and a half hours spread over two days (I have to teach sometimes...).

Annoyingly, Ed appears from time to time to hinder proceedings using something that I understand is called a "sense of humour", so it is through gritted teeth and with a dark heart* that I have to say that he has done a truly outstanding design job. This is the first time that I have built the machine (all my work so far has been on extruders), and it went perfectly from his instructions on the RepRap Wiki here. Also, the way that he uses bits of the part-constructed machine as jigs and templates to allow one accurately to build and align other bits is, frankly, inspired. You will notice that the only measurements that I make are with an ordinary tape measure.